Tata Badong, as Pedrocillo is addressed in the village, said they have been planting traditional upland varieties for over five decades.

According to him, upland rice varieties are resistant to pest and diseases, aromatic, with good eating quality, require less farm inputs and highly marketable.

Besides, they could survive without irrigation or solely on rainfall.

These can be distinguished from the lowland rice varieties because of their long, plump and heavy grains.

Marivic Caballas, who owns an inherited two-hectare rice farm in the village, recalled her great grandparents up to her generation have been planting these varieties as part of their usual cropping pattern.

Planting season in the village is during summer — running between April and May — and harvest comes by October.

Caballas said they only plant once a year.

They plant along the lines and for sloping areas the bunkol system is applied.

Bunkol is a 10-foot bamboo pole with metal tips for making holes. The local term for the farming method or planting is "asok" using the bunkol.

This is a traditional farming method with zero tillage.

But the most common practice in planting is "budbod" or placing the seeds on the lines to ensure that seedlings are in rows to facilitate weeding.

Planting rice once a year is advantageous, with Oma-oma farmers believing the cycle of pest and disease is incomplete when fallow period takes place.

It also allows the soil to replenish lost nutrients, the reason Oma-oma farmers seldom use chemical fertilizer.

Interestingly, despite the tedious practice, these farmers still prefer the traditional method of planting up to harvesting to their desire of preserving the old practice inherited from their ancestors.

This is for the benefit of our next lines of generation, said Tata Badong.

In harvesting, they usually use a native tool called gutol and not sickle used in the lowland farms.

Gutol, according to Caballas, minimizes grain loss because harvesting is done slowly and manually — cutting only the rice panicle one by one.

In extracting the grains from the panicle, they use the traditional way of threshing called ginik or the use of their feet.

Magdalena Pobocan, the villages agricultural technician, said Oma-oma farmers get better price for their upland rice that fetches between P40 and 50 per kilo.

Village farms yield an average of 60 cavans of palay per hectare per harvest.

Two other nearby barangays — Maonon and Abella — are also in the same rice production practice and, according to Pobocan, continuous technical assistance and monitoring are done by the Dept. of Agriculture to ensure farmers adopt appropriate technologies.

For Pedrocillo and his fellow Oma-oma farmers, this farming heritage must be preserved.

This inheritance would help us sustain and survive the unsettling globalization," he added. (PNA)